Eighteen Again
by missparker85
Summary: When she touches his face, her hand is cold.


Buffy kills Dawn first, then Xander, who happened to be in bed with her sister at the time. Next she takes out Willow and then three Slayers in a matter of minutes. Kennedy, who didn't even have time to get angry before Buffy took off her head in one clean swoop, and then Vi and one of the new girls, Jessica.

By the time she comes for Giles, he's gotten word to expect her. He also understands that there isn't anything he can do to stop her; not with the trail of carnage she has left behind her as a calling card. He hasn't seen her in nearly six months and it's the longest stretch of time since the demise of Sunnydale. But she always wrote and she always called and then, a month ago, the contact had stopped. But he didn't worry. Buffy could take care of herself.

He's completely pissed when she arrives. It's the middle of the night and he's been drinking since morning. Scotch first, then Cognac, and then some really old Vodka. He hasn't been this drunk for years and years. He can't even stand up straight when she arrives. He doesn't want to fight back – he doesn't want to fight Buffy.

She needs an invitation to enter.

No one had said why she'd been on such a rampaging killing spree but he thought it would be something… something more. A mental break, perhaps, or an infection of sorts.

"Come in," he says. She's already kicked in the door and now she saunters in past the threshold. She's still so pretty, even with the demon squatting on top of her features. Her little heart shaped face, her perfect skin. Part of him is actually glad to see her because six months is a long time after years of seeing her almost daily.

"Rupert," she says, with a big, saucy grin. He has so many questions – why and who and when all swim around in his brain but he's awfully drunk and even the adrenaline rushing through his blood at the sight of her can't sober him up enough for decent conversation. So he says nothing. What can he say anyway? She isn't Buffy anymore. She's a monster wearing Buffy's body like a fine coat. She has Buffy's memories, Buffy's voice, but the spark of life that is Buffy is gone.

When she touches his face, her hand is cold.

"Aren't you glad to see me?" she says, pouting like she used to when she was sixteen. Her face relaxes and she looks like just Buffy again, and he is relieved.

"You've come to kill me," he manages.

"Yes," she says.

"Like the others," he says. He thinks he might be sick and looks around for something to hold the vomit.

"No," she says. "You, Rupert, get the extra special treatment."

She licks his neck first, before she bites it. He's been nibbled at before but nothing has prepared him for all his blood being drained so quickly. With each pump of his frantic heart, the world gets further and further away.

When Buffy cuts her own wrist and presses it to his mouth, he doesn't hesitate. She tastes like sex and he drinks his fill.

oooo

It's the most bloody fantastic feeling in the world. She's there when he wakes up and she's ready for him. She has this young thing, practically still a girl, waiting for his first meal.

"Thought you might be hungry," she says and though he is, starving actually, he takes his time. He touches the girl in all the wrong places and drinks her one mouth full at a time. Her screams are almost as pleasurable as the blood, hot going down and smoldering in his stomach. Buffy lingers in his periphery, watching and smiling like she's finally done something good enough for her Watcher. After an hour, though, she's bored.

"Kill her," Buffy says, finally and so Giles finishes in more ways than one.

He feels like a new man. He doesn't need his glasses anymore and he breaks them with glee. He tries to look at himself in the mirror but of course, his reflection doesn't show. Still, if he could see himself, he would see smooth skin, bright eyes, and all traces of gray gone. His body has rebuilt itself in death to be stronger, better.

They leave London. They move south during the night. Buffy picks a car and Giles hotwires it while Buffy smears the windows black. The first day, they find an underground car park and wait out the sunlight. In the backseat, he fucks her like he has wanted to all along. He doesn't hold back at all and vampire sex isn't so different from human sex – she still gets wet in all the right places. She claws at his back and sinks her fangs into his shoulder and begs him for it which only makes it better.

"Is that why you turned me, pet?" he asks after, searching the glove box for a fag. He's always liked a good smoke after sex. It comes up empty though; he'll have to wait for dark. Maybe they'll eat the shop keep. "So I could shag you?"

"It's a perk," she says. She's started dressing like she's eighteen again, like that last year at the high school when all she wore were baby doll dresses and soft sweaters. That year when she stopped being a girl and he dreamt about her at night.

"Well be a good girl and do it again," he says, pulling her toward him. She doesn't bother with knickers and it's one more thing to love about her. Saucy little slut. This time she's on top and it makes the wait for darkness almost bearable, watching the slayer bounce around on top of him.

But she isn't the slayer anymore.

oooo

They stow away on a cruise ship headed for the States. She wants to go to New York and flying is harder these days, without identification; especially transatlantic flights where the sun chases the plane the whole flight. It's a big ship and they pick away at people slowly, people who won't easily be missed.

During the day they rest in the cargo hold where it's always cold and always dark.

"Dawn tasted like cotton candy," Buffy says, his earlobe wet with her saliva. "She screamed the whole time."

"And what of Willow?" he asks. He would have like to have tasted Willow.

"I didn't eat her," Buffy says, wrinkling her little nose up. "Too much magic."

"And what about me?" he asks, pushing her head down to his crotch – a not so subtle suggestion.

"You tasted like scotch," she says, giving him a long, wet lick. "And leather books, and the garden after the rain."

It's either sex or killing with them, so far, and he isn't getting impatient for a third option. She likes to bring him young girls to toy with, she likes to watch him fuck them; she gets off on listening to them cry. He'd always taught Buffy that once the demon set in, the real person was gone. That a vampire's personality had nothing to do with the person they'd been before. He knows now that this is wrong.

He is more himself than he has ever been.


End file.
